CORPORATE CONTROLLER
EL SEGUNDO, CA | MOORESVILLE, NC | OR FULLY REMOTE | FULL-TIME | REPORTS TO: CFO
Cambium is a global company building the advanced materials base for reindustrialization - from AI-driven molecular design to agile domestic manufacturing. Defense, aerospace, and other high-performance applications demand materials that are stronger, lighter, and more resilient, delivered at unprecedented speed and scale. Our team of world-class scientists and engineers was assembled specifically to take on those challenges. Whether enabling hypersonic flight or protecting critical systems, our solutions solve mission-critical problems and push the limits of what’s possible. Come join us and revolutionize advanced materials for defense, aerospace, and beyond.
THE ROLE
This is a blank sheet of paper. Cambium is building its accounting organization, and this is the leadership hire into it.
Today, Cambium’s general ledger is maintained and its financial statements are prepared by an outside CPA firm that provides ongoing outsourced accounting and finance services to the Company. That firm is a capable and important partner, and will remain one - you will work closely and collaboratively with them, and over time, in a planned and thoughtful manner, you will build the internal team. You will help bring attention to rigor. Establishing a disciplined close calendar and a documented control environment are points of emphasis from day one. The Company moved from a modified cash basis to U.S. GAAP in 2026, with the conversion effective beginning with the 2025 balance sheet, and is currently engaging an independent audit firm for its first-ever audit. Revenues today come from government contracts subject to DCAA oversight, with commercial opportunities expected to grow rapidly and SHD Composite Materials Ltd - the mature UK composites manufacturer Cambium acquired in December 2025, with subsidiaries in Slovenia and the United States - serving commercial customers across aerospace, defense, motorsports, and other high-performance markets. You will need to be fluent in both worlds: government contract accounting, and commercial contracts at scale. SHD operates as a standalone operating company with its own finance and accounting team, which manages its local statutory audit and filing obligations; you will oversee the consolidation of its results into Cambium’s U.S. GAAP financials. Acquiring and consolidating additional operating companies on the SHD model is a core part of our growth plan, so the consolidation and integration architecture you build now is the one the next several deals will run through.
Reporting to the CFO, you will build the team, establish the close and the control environment and carry a venture-backed advanced materials company through its first audit and toward the reporting discipline of a more mature operating company. You will own the numbers - one set of books, closed on a calendar, that the executive team, the board, our investors, our auditors, and our customers can all rely on.
This is a build role, not a maintain role. There is no close checklist to inherit, no policy manual to update, no reconciliation binder to refresh. The right person has done the unglamorous version of this work - written the memo, designed the control, run the cutover, sat through the first audit - and wants to do it again with more scope. The work will be hands-on initially and should scale to supervisory rapidly as the team comes together, and you should want both halves of that.
The position can be based at either of Cambium’s primary US sites - El Segundo, CA or Mooresville, NC - or fully remote, with periodic travel to El Segundo, Mooresville, our other US locations, and Europe.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Build the accounting organization
- Define the org: the roles, the sequencing, and the split between corporate and site accounting. Hire, onboard, and develop the team, beginning with the Payroll & Accounts Payable Specialist and the general ledger and technical accounting hires that follow.
- Partner closely with our outsourced accounting provider on the general ledger, close, and financial statement preparation.
- Provide consolidation oversight of the finance and accounting team at SHD - reporting standards, close calendar and deliverables, policy alignment, and technical guidance - while respecting that it is a standalone operating company running its own day-to-day finance function.
- Own the monthly, quarterly, and annual close end to end - establish the calendar, the task ownership, the account reconciliation standards, and the review layer - and drive it to a close timeline appropriate for a company at our stage and shrinking.
- Produce accurate, timely consolidated financial statements under U.S. GAAP, with supporting schedules that stand up without a verbal explanation attached.
- Write the accounting policy manual and the technical accounting memos behind it: revenue recognition, inventory, capitalization, leases, equity, business combinations, and the judgments we have actually made rather than the ones a template assumes.
- Partner with FP&A on the reporting hand-off after each close - actuals that tie, on a schedule they can plan around, with variance explanations grounded in the ledger.
Lead the accounting voice in ERP selection and implementation
- Serve as a key leader and stakeholder advising on ERP decisions for Cambium and consolidated reporting, replacing Intuit Enterprise Suite: requirements definition, vendor evaluation and demos, integrator selection, and the business case the CFO and board will weigh. SHD remains on its own systems and is consolidated rather than migrated.
- Own the accounting design decisions within the implementation - chart of accounts, entity and segment structure, and a reporting structure that serves consolidated reporting, site-level reporting, and government contract requirements at the same time.
- Integrate the surrounding stack - Ramp for spend and AP, ADP and TriNet for payroll, and the FP&A planning and BI layer - so that data flows rather than gets re-keyed.
- Support the cutover: data conversion and validation, parallel operation, opening balance verification, user training, and the documentation that lets the team run the system after the integrator leaves.
- Build a consolidation layer designed for a company that acquires - a common account structure and mapping approach that an acquired operating company can be brought onto without being re-platformed on day one.
Assess and design the control environment
- Assess what exists today and produce a clear-eyed view of where Cambium is exposed: cash disbursements, procurement and purchase commitments, payroll, inventory and physical custody, revenue and billing, journal entry and close, and system access.
- Design and implement the control environment: segregation of duties, delegation of authority and approval thresholds, reconciliation and review controls, journal entry approval, and period-end certification. Build it at the weight the company can actually sustain, and no heavier.
- Document processes and controls to a standard that supports an external audit today and leaves a solid foundation for the possibility of SOX readiness later, without a wholesale rebuild.
- Establish IT general controls with IT: access provisioning and review, change management, and segregation of duties enforced in the system rather than in a spreadsheet.
- Own the remediation of audit findings, management letter comments, and control deficiencies - with root causes addressed and closure evidenced, not deferred to next year.
Carry the audit, tax, and compliance load
- Own the relationship with the independent auditor through Cambium’s first audit and every one after: planning, PBC list ownership, technical positions, component auditor coordination in the UK and Slovenia, and delivery of a clean opinion on schedule.
- Own consolidation: multi-entity, multi-currency translation, intercompany transactions and eliminations, and a consolidation process that ties every period without heroics - and that scales to the operating companies we acquire next.
- Own the conversion of SHD’s IFRS reporting to U.S. GAAP for consolidation purposes, including purchase accounting, the opening balance sheet, and the conversion adjustments and documentation our audit will test. SHD’s team prepares its local statutory reporting; you own the bridge and the consolidated result.
- Ensure statutory-to-U.S.-GAAP and statutory-to-management differences are documented and explainable across every entity, and coordinate with SHD’s team and its local auditors where our consolidated audit depends on their work.
- Own the tax function through advisors: federal, state, and international income tax compliance and provision, transfer pricing, sales and use tax, R&D credits, and indirect tax in the UK and EU.
- Oversee government contract accounting and compliance: indirect rate structure and development, allowability under FAR and the cost principles, incurred cost submissions, timekeeping and labor distribution, and readiness for DCAA audits and reviews.
- Support export control and trade compliance requirements where they touch procurement, vendor onboarding, and inventory records, in partnership with Legal and Trade Compliance.
Own treasury operations and the transactional engine
- Own cash management and treasury operations: bank account structure and administration, banking relationships, payment controls and authorization limits, and daily cash positioning across US, UK, and European entities.
- Manage intercompany funding, cross-border cash movement, and FX exposure at the transaction level, and partner with FP&A on the 13-week cash forecast by owning the actuals side of it.
- Own accounts payable, payroll accounting, accounts receivable and collections, credit terms, corporate card programs, and expense policy administration - and the controls around each.
- Own revenue accounting for government and commercial contracts - recognition, unbilled and deferred balances, and billing accuracy - including contract-specific terms that do not fit a standard template.
- Own the accounting workstream of M&A as a core growth channel: accounting and quality-of-earnings diligence, purchase accounting and opening balance sheets, and the post-close accounting, policy, and systems integration of acquired operating companies - including bringing each onto Cambium’s close calendar, account structure, and reporting standard.
KEY REQUIREMENTS
- 10+ years of progressive accounting experience, including public accounting and time as a Controller, Assistant Controller, or Accounting Director in an operating company, ideally including prior ownership of a multi-entity international close.
- CPA required. Active license strongly preferred.
- Public company and SOX experience strongly desired - whether as an auditor of public company clients, in a public company accounting or SEC reporting role, or having taken a private company through IPO readiness. Direct experience designing, documenting, and testing SOX controls is a significant advantage.
- Demonstrated experience building an accounting function rather than inheriting one - standing up a close, hiring the team, writing the policies, and transitioning work in-house from an outsourced provider. Tell us what did not exist before you got there.
- Experience with the selection and implementation of an ERP is strongly desired - participating in the evaluation, owning accounting design decisions, working with the vendor and integrator, and living through the cutover. We want someone who has seen what goes wrong.
- Multi-entity, multi-currency consolidation experience is required - foreign currency translation, remeasurement, intercompany eliminations, and CTA, in an environment with real international operations rather than a single foreign subsidiary.
- M&A integration experience is highly desired. Acquiring operating companies is central to our growth plan, so we place real weight on candidates who have done purchase accounting, opening balance sheets, and the post-close work of bringing an acquired business onto a common close calendar, account structure, and reporting standard.
- Demonstrated experience assessing a light or informal control environment and designing a new one, including segregation of duties in a small team where it is genuinely hard.
- Comfort owning the auditor relationship directly. First-year audit experience is welcome but not required.
- Technical accounting strength in the areas that matter here: revenue recognition (ASC 606), business combinations (ASC 805), leases (ASC 842), and stock compensation (ASC 718) - and the ability to write the memo yourself.
- Venture-backed or high-growth company experience; comfort with board-level and investor-level scrutiny of the accounting.
- Advanced Excel - we are a Microsoft 365 shop. Hands-on ERP experience (NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Epicor, or similar); we run Intuit Enterprise Suite, Ramp, ADP, and TriNet today. Power BI and SQL welcome.
- Experience with consolidation, close management, and planning tools - Hyperion, FloQast, Adaptive, BlackLine, or similar - is highly desirable.
- Experience in manufacturing, aerospace, defense, industrial, or advanced materials is preferred. Depth in standard costing and manufacturing cost accounting is welcome but not required.
- Bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance. Master’s in accounting or taxation welcome, not required.
- Excellent written and verbal communication. You can explain a technical position to an auditor, a control requirement to an engineer, and a variance to the board - and you write clearly enough that your memos hold up when you are not in the room.
- Willingness to be hands-on in the ledger while also building the function, and the judgment to know which one the week actually calls for.
- Comfort with ambiguity, limited existing process, and shifting priorities; low ego, high ownership, and a strong bias toward building. Absolute integrity - this seat does not bend.
- Willingness to travel periodically to all Cambium sites, particularly El Segundo, Mooresville, and Europe.
SALARY/BENEFITS:
Salary Range $145,000 - $220,000
Cambium offers a highly competitive compensation and benefits plan. This includes excellent medical/dental/vision benefits, and a matching 401(k) plan, professional development reimbursement, and an opportunity for equity for most full-time positions.